The Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight is an excellent ereader. It's the best, actually. But it's not indestructible. And with new features like a frontlit display, there are new things that can go wrong. Like this frightful little light tunnel that popped up after I scratched the new Nook's screen all to hell.

That gash happened after I accidentally dropped a remote control about six inches onto the screen. Clumsy, entirely my fault, super dumb, why don't I just leave it in a bag in a bar. All true. But that's also something that'll happen day-to-day over the lifespan of an ereader. If it's not a remote, it's a set of keys or a phone or a dog's paw. And while the reading experience is vastly superior to reading on a tablet, those backlit counterparts are a little harder to nick up.

Look, yes: If you break your gadget, it is going to be broken. This is nothing new. The point here is that if you are a clumsy idiot with your gadgets, as I clearly am, you might end up with a super distracting hole of light when using the best new feature on the Nook. It makes it pretty impossible to concentrate on a book, and you'll probably want to just use a separate light. The scratch is sort of noticeable with the light turned off, but sort of not. Kind of like a coffee stain on a page—except it's on every page of every book you own.

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This doesn't mean that the new Nook isn't good. The new feature only backfires if you break your gadget, and even then you can still keep the light off and use it as a regular ereader. But as we pile on more and more features, some of the stale old "features" of analog media come back to prominence. Like not ruining every one of your books with a single act of idiocy.